


The Soonest Winner

by Sharpiefan



Series: The Shakespeare Series [20]
Category: The London Life (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Peninsular War, References to Shakespeare, Regency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 09:33:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7430201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharpiefan/pseuds/Sharpiefan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"...when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner."</i>  Soon after returning to the Peninsula, Robbie has to preside over a court-martial on one of his men</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Soonest Winner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cafemusain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafemusain/gifts).



> Possibly the first instalment (though not chronologically!) in Robbie and Bee's Peninsular adventures. A whole lot of the ideas that show up in this were first tossed up in a PM conversation between cafemusain and myself; I just went and stitched them together and came up with this. Please note: Robbie is very much a man of his time, which doesn't always show in the same way in RP! Also, LL doesn't always show the rougher side of life that characters like Robbie are familiar with.

**Late January/early February 1812, after Robbie and Bee have returned to Portugal**

The facts, damn it all, were conclusive: the man had been caught stealing, and for no reason on earth that Robbie could see. He would have thought his men too fly to have been caught, but either Peterson had slipped up or his sergeant was more canny than the man had realised.

Either way, there was no option now – the provosts would happily hang Peterson, and while Robbie would stop short of that, he could not be seen to be soft; he would begin to lose respect from his officers and men if he allowed that. He just hated that the inevitable conclusion was the lash, but there was simply no other way he could effectively punish the crime – it was too great a crime to be effectively punished by things like pack drill or extra duty. Almost as soon as the man's troop officer had reported ordering the man into confinement, and the reasons for it, Robbie had known what the inevitable outcome would be.

And now, here they were, at the conclusion of the court-martial, waiting for Robbie to give the inescapable verdict. “Thank you, gentlemen.” He looked at the man standing bareheaded before him. The ramrod posture could not quite hide the man's nervousness at being confronted by his Colonel like this, and the slight dread at what was to come – he knew, Robbie knew, the others assembled here knew it.

Robbie glanced at the man's troop officer, Captain Latham. “Do you have anything to say for him?” he asked. He knew the verdict; there was no alternative, but the sentence itself still hung in the balance – and Peterson was one of several men who had joined the regiment in Spain while Robbie had been confined to a sofa in his father's house in London. Was this a one-off, out-of-character incident, or was the man one of the King's bad bargains – even the cavalry was not immune to receiving men who had enlisted rather than hang, after all. And the man's posture and expression were giving absolutely nothing away – not that Robbie could fault him for that in the slightest.

“Well, sir, Private Peterson is a hard-working man, takes good care of his horse, tack and kit. I have never found fault with him, nor had I thought him the sort of man to do such a thing.”

Which was pretty much precisely the reading Robbie had got from the man, too. “Very well. Clear the court while we consider the verdict, if you please.”

The prisoner, his defence and the various others who had been present withdrew, and Robbie took a breath, glancing between the various other officers who made up the court martial board.

“Cornet?” he prompted gently; the custom was that the court-martial members gave their opinions in order of rank, most junior speaking first so that he could not be thought to be pandering to those senior to him.

The boy (really, he was still a boy – had Robbie ever been that young? It was hard to imagine that he _had_ , once) spoke up, a little hesitantly. “There's no question that he did do it, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr Dancy,” Robbie said. One guilty verdict. “Mr Protheroe?”

“Guilty, sir.”

“Captain Laming?”

“Guilty as charged, sir.”

“Captain Walker?”

“Guilty, sir.”

Robbie sighed. “Then it is unanimous.” He had known it would be, of course, but there were procedures to follow.

He summoned the prisoner and other interested parties back in, and steepled his fingers on the polished surface of the table in front of him.

“I am sorry to have had to convene this court martial so soon after my return, and sorrier still that the result is as it is. Private Peterson, you have been found guilty of the crime of theft, for which the sentence is a hundred lashes, to be given tomorrow morning. I cannot and I will not condone theft in any form whether it is from a comrade or, as in this case, from one of our Spanish allies.”

The court was cleared in short order, and Robbie found himself back in his own tent, sitting at his own table, his jacket and sash draped over the chair. His hands were clasped on the table's surface and he was staring at nothing.

He had no idea how long he had sat like that before his wife set a glass of brandy in front of him and moved to rub his shoulders.

" _We give express charge, that in our marches through the country, there be nothing compelled from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner_ ,” he quoted, almost to himself, clasping his hands round the glass. “We cannot afford to have the Spanish up in arms against us the way they are against the French, Bee. It's just... He shouldn't have done it, and he knows it – it was the stupidest thing to do and I think he did it on the spur of the moment, without thinking. Cavalry soldiers _need_ to think – we cannot keep them on such a tight rein as the infantry. But I hate having to do it, Bee.”

“Mmhmm.” The rubbing continued, and he picked the glass up and took a good mouthful.

“I just... All I can hope is that this is an aberration, that it will not happen again. I will _not_ have this become a regiment where the first recourse is the lash and where I cannot trust my men.”

“It won't.” The words were spoken with such certainty that he could not help but smile, even as he tipped his head up to see Bee's face, upside down from his perspective, but with a smile that brought an answering smile to his own mouth.

“You're so sure of that?”

“Of course.” Bee stopped rubbing his shoulders and came to sit in one of the other chairs, where they could see each other properly. “Even the new soldiers, the ones you don't know yet, they've all heard about Colonel Fitzgerald and his reputation for fairness. Although the old hands have given them a holy terror of your keen eye when it comes to inspections and the like.”

Her grin was infectious, and Robbie couldn't help grinning back, even as he drained the glass.

“Marrying you, Mrs Fitzgerald, was the best thing I ever did, with one exception,” he informed her.

“Oh? What's the exception, then?”

“My taking a commission in the first place,” Robbie told her with an arch look, and then sobered a little. “It was a stupid mistake on Peterson's part. Would you do me a favour, and look in on him afterwards, once he's in the surgeon's care? _I_ can't, obviously...”

“Of course.” Bee patted his shoulder as she got up to remove his now-empty brandy glass. “Though... one thing puzzles me. A hundred lashes is an awful lot, just for a mistake, isn't it?”

Robbie shook his head. “I was considering twice that, until Captain Latham gave him as good a character as I'd expect any dragoon to have. The army uses a lighter cat than the navy, so sentences are correspondingly higher. Doesn't make it any easier, or harder, to award, I shouldn't think.” Or to take, but the army had to instil discipline in the men _somehow._

“Come to bed, Robbie, and don't let's think about it any more tonight,” Bee said, taking his hand and pulling him over to their bed, screened off from the rest of the tent.

“Like I said, Bee, you're the best thing that ever happened to me,” Robbie told her, putting his arms around her and giving her a kiss on the nose which made her laugh, even as she set about distracting him from his morose thoughts of earlier.

 


End file.
